Recession encouraging businesses to take marketing online

Growing businesses have been encouraged to embrace online advertising by the economic downturn, according to an expert.

Eva Berg-Winters, senior manager and new media specialist at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said her “gut feeling” was that the downturn has “enhanced” the movement from traditional direct marketing to web-based solutions.

However, she added that firms should not necessarily believe that the internet is immune from the effects of the economic climate.

“Internet in the UK is already quite significant and has a large share of the market although the advertising market is shrinking rapidly this year,” she explained.

“Search has strongly benefited from the downturn in that it has increased its market share and although search is well established in the UK, 2009 has still not been an easy year for search.”

Recent figures from eMarketer predicted that growth in online ad spending will reach just 0.9 per cent this year, with more momentum gained over the course of 2010.